Month: April 2017

A couple of my friends post in Friday Fictioneers once a week and I thought maybe I should give it a try. I have to come up with a short story – no more than 100 words – about the above featured picture.

So, here goes:

They stood side by side, surprised and confused. His jacket still had the price tag dangling from the left sleeve.

“This can’t be right!” Steve said, frowning at the GPS in his hand.

“Are you sure you put in the correct coordinates?”

“I’m perfectly capable of putting coordinates into a GPS, Cheryl!” he snapped.

He compared the numbers to the ones in a notebook.

“Yes! This is exactly the right place.”

“Well, Steve, since Geocaching was your idea, you dig it up! I’ll be waiting in the car.” Cheryl stated sarcastically. “Hand over the keys.”

The lovely photo prompt for this week is provided by Liz Young. Thanks Liz. If you would like to see more stories, click the button below.

Special thanks to Rochelle Wisoff-Fields for her weekly photo challenge Friday Fictioneer.

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Hey! Nice to see you again. I missed last weekend’s Coffee Share because I was busy watching The Viking electrocute himself. Happily, despite fiddling with wires that should have been full of electricity, he is still alive and grumbling.

But enough of that. How are you doing? Is life treating you good? Help yourself to coffee and tiny Pecan Tarts that were made for Dwarfs, or maybe Elves or possibly Leprechauns. I’m just guessing but I think they were meant to be ‘Bite Sized’ but they aren’t. They are, at a bare minimum, two bites but are actually an awkward three bites where the last bite crumbles in your hand and you end up having to suck the crumbs out of your palm like a Hoover. It’s not elegant but it is amusing to watch guests try to be polite.

My week was fairly dull, and by dull I mean boring. Nothing much happened. Until this morning. And then it happened before I even got out of bed.

No. Not that.

We stayed up too late last night so this morning when the Cat Alarm went off at 8:30 I was completely unprepared to get up. So I shouted “IZZIE!! SHUT UP!” which seemed to work for about two and a half minutes. There were several more shouted threats and curses and a giggle from The Viking who apparently found all this amusing.

There was the inevitable tipping point though. That moment when I didn’t immediately fall back to sleep immediately after threatening death and dismemberment. And that’s the moment when Competitive Sleeping happened.

Me: I should get up and make the coffee.

Me: He’s awake. He’ll get up any moment.

Me: He was up later than I was.

Me: That’s not my fault. He made his choice.

Me: Actually, I think he was trying to fix something with the Kodi Box.

Me: He loves doing that. It’s like play time for him.

Me: I’m pretty sure he wasn’t enjoying himself.

Me: How would you know? You were asleep. He might have been Naked Break Dancing for all you know.

Me: Come on, now. He would never do that. He was trying to fix it so tomorrow I wouldn’t have to wait while he tried finding an available stream for a half hour. That’s how he shows his love.

Me: Pfft! He was probably watching porn.

Me: He doesn’t need to watch porn! Geez! Where do you come up with this shit?!

Me: I’m just saying.

Me: Don’t. Just don’t. I’ll get up and let him sleep in.

Me: WAIT! He’s moving! Maybe he is getting up and will make the coffee. Wouldn’t that be awesome?

Me: Yes, that would be awesome but he’s not moving anymore. He went back to sleep.

Me: So wiggle around a little bit! Snore! Then he’ll think you’re sleeping.

Me: But I’m not sleeping anymore.

Me: He doesn’t know that for sure! A little snore would convince him he’s more awake than you are.

Me: Do you even remember last weekend when he got up early and went out to buy fresh buns and cheese and doughnuts? Getting up and making coffee is the least I could do.

Me: Well, if you’re going to bring up every obsolete act of kindness every time you want to be selfish, I can’t see any point of me even being here.

Me: That might be construed as a good thing, you know.

Me: So you want to get up?

Me: No! Of course not! But someone has to make coffee and I’m the first one awake.

Me:He’s awake – probably more awake than you are! Do you hear any snoring? Then he isn’t sleeping and if you’d just make a few sleeping noises, he’ll go make the coffee!

Me: I’m getting up! I need coffee if I have to keep arguing with you!

Me: Well, you’ll have to do the dishes too because you didn’t do them last night. Still want to get out of bed first?

Me: Bah! I forgot about that. There’s every chance that he’ll just make the coffee and I’ll have to do the dishes myself anyway.

Me: But! You’ll have coffee ready for you.

Me: I’ll just do the dishes while I’m waiting for the coffee to brew.

Me: You are such a pussy! I want to stay in bed! Gawd!

Me: Stop being so melodramatic. You’re just getting out of bed, not inventing the wheel you know.

Me: You’re not going to wear that are you? It makes you look fat.

Me: You’re just cranky because I won’t stay in bed. You loved this shirt last week.

Me: Well, I had more sleep last week.

I consoled myself by committing to a nap this afternoon. I love Saturday afternoon naps when I can curl up in my happy place and spend time with just me. Sure, it’s a weird place sometimes but that’s okay, nobody needs to know.

Thanks, as always, to Nerd in the Brain for hosting Weekend Coffee Share and Part-Time Monster for inventing it.

Over the weekend, The Viking and I – mostly The Viking – had to replace our Garage Door Opener because it inconveniently and selfishly died.

We took down the dead and useless Door Opener and then began assembling the new unit. It was all very straight forward, no big surprises, until The Viking went rogue. He threw the instruction manual into the corner and began fiddling with electrical wires.

Me: Why aren’t you electrocuted?!

The Viking: What? There’s no power to these lines.

Me: The wires are coming right out of the ceiling, the breaker hasn’t been flipped, so why aren’t you electrocuted?!

The Viking: These wires get their power from the garage door opener brains, not from the building’s power supply.

Me: Stop talking in Sorcery! The brains are plugged in! I can see the power cord plugged into the power plug!

The Viking: Relax! Take it easy. I know what I’m doing.

Me: …….

Me: …….

Me: …….

Me: I will never understand electricity. It’s terrifying.

He carried on with his Warlockery and I watched him.

Me: I can’t believe I’ve lived for this long without understanding electricity. I stuck a knife in an electrical socket once because my mother told me to never do that. Ever.

The Viking: And so you did.

Me: Of course I did. You can’t just tell me not to do something without telling me why.

The Viking: Well, you obviously didn’t die.

Me: Exactly. It hurt, but I didn’t die, and my curiosity was gone. My parents could have spared me that.

Me: I also stuck my head in a plastic Drycleaning bag because there was a warning on it that said to never do that. Again, they never said why.

The Viking: Seriously?

Me: Yes. And I didn’t suffocate. Now that I think about it though, I think the warning did mention ‘Suffocation’ but I was like 6 years old and didn’t have a clue what that meant.

The Viking: …..

Me: My best friend found a box of wooden matches once. They looked harmless but apparently they were ‘extremely dangerous’ and children should never play with them.

The Viking: Let me guess….

Me: See?! You know already what needed to be done! We tried to light the wooden fence on fire but it wouldn’t burn. We tried to set the grass on fire too, but that wouldn’t work either. The only thing that actually did work was burning our fingers. And then I got a spanking, like having burned fingers weren’t punishment enough, because Darcy apparently didn’t know how to lie. I couldn’t be friends with him after that.

The Viking: Hahaha!

Me: And pull cords on blinds.

The Viking: You didn’t!

Me: Actually, yes. I did.

The Viking stopped what he was fiddling with and looked at me with an odd expression on his face. “You sound like your daughter.”

Me: That’s impossible because I made certain that I explained things to her. Don’t put a knife in an electrical outlet because electricity, through sorcery, will enter the knife, travel through your arm and straight upward because of gravity or something and blow your head completely off your body. And guess what? She never stuck a knife in an electrical outlet.

The Viking: That’s not how electricity works.

Me: Does it really matter? The point is that she never electrocuted herself because she listened to me. Unlike you who will die at some point this afternoon because you keep touching electrical wires.

The Viking: I’m not going to die today.

Me: I feel like a kid when my Dad took me to work with him and I had to sit around doing absolutely nothing for hours because there might be bears around.

The Viking: …..

Me: There were only so many times I could be interested in what was in the glove compartment. And without the truck running fiddling with the radio buttons was less than satisfying.

The Viking: …..

Me: I did find a magazine full of naked women behind the seat. Dad took it away from me and then made another worker take me home. He said he had an emergency to deal with but I didn’t buy it.

The Viking: …..

Me: He did explain the perils of playing with the gear shifter when the truck was running but he never left it running. He must not have trusted my judgement.

The Viking: …..

Me: There were old pallets at Dad’s job and he wanted to take them apart and use them for something else. He gave me a hammer and told me to get all the nails out but I accidentally stepped on a nail as I was pulling a nail from another piece of wood. I didn’t even get a tetanus shot. Oh! And one time I had a really, really sore throat so he painted my tonsils with MercuroChrome. It’s toxic to the environment but not tonsils I guess. I’m lucky to even be alive!

The Viking: …..

Me: Hey! Did I ever tell you that I know how to pick a lock on an interior door? So if you were to lock the bathroom door and then accidentally faint I would be able to pick the lock and save you.

The Viking: I never lock the bathroom door.

Me: I’ve just noticed that when I get bored my mind has a tendency to wander a bit.

The Viking: You think?

Me: I’m seriously bored. I didn’t think it would take this amount of time to replace a door opener. I would have brought booze and a book if I had known. Maybe a pillow for a nap. And a fuzzy blanket. Or binoculars. That might have amused me for a little while.

Well, it was my birthday on the second of April and The Viking and I celebrated it like we usually do – getting drunk and telling each other our inner most feelings. We then further celebrate for two more days by lying around the house with hang overs. It isn’t everyone’s cup of tea but it works for us. No, that’s not why I’m depressed.

I’m depressed because I noticed something. Maybe it was because I was kind of drunk or maybe it was one of those random things that suddenly occur to me. Whatever the reason, I realized it when I was dishing up the Birthday Cheesecake.

I have a Demon. And it’s evil. But such a sissy evil that it may as well not be evil at all!

You see, the tip of the first piece stuck to the tip of the second piece and that second piece was my piece!

I made that determination before I ever began dishing it up. I would serve The Viking the first piece and I would take the second piece, because I’m generous like that. There was no way I could have foreseen this eventuality. But now his piece had a jagged, square tip instead of the nice point and my tip had a bite-sized raggedy knob jutting off to the right.

I should carefully and surgically remove the extra tip from my piece and stick it back on his piece. That’s the proper thing to do. My angelic side voted for this immediately.

But wait! Let’s not be hasty here. The Viking isn’t even paying attention. He would be none the wiser if I pinched the end of his piece into a tip. I could still remove the extra bit from my piece but then eat it quick so he wouldn’t notice the discrepancy. He’s drunk. I’m drunk. I think I could pull it off. He wouldn’t see that my piece was bigger than his piece, especially if I tilt my plate a little bit to obscure his view. The Demon voted for this option before I was even done thinking it.

The Angel disagreed. No. Put the tip back on his piece.

But it’s Cheesecake! Strawberry Swirl Cheesecake!

Under the rules of the Jungle possession is 9/10th of the law, you snooze you lose, what happens on the counter stays on the counter, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth, waste not want not.

On the other hand…..do unto others as you would have them do unto you, once a thief always a thief and what would Christopher Walken do? Hmm….maybe he’s not a good subject because I have a feeling that Chris would eat the entire Birthday Cheesecake and leave without saying a word.

But I gave The Viking the bigger pieces of fish the other night because I know he loves fish more than I love fish even though I was just as hungry as he was! And I let him take more potatoes last week! I always give him the bigger share and I’m happy to do it! That should buy me a little bit of Karma. I even let him drive my car. Unsupervised! All the time!

However, maybe Karma gave me the tip of The Viking’s Cheesecake because I always try to do the right thing. Maybe it’s a reward and if I give it back it could be misconstrued. I think there is a rule out there, somewhere, that to ignore a gift from Karma is insulting and she may never give me a gift again.

I might have given in to the Demon at that point except the Angel brought my attention to a recent event that wasn’t my most shining moment.

Shit!!

A few weeks ago I split my Easter Bunny Poo with The Viking and there was an odd number of Poo Pieces so someone had to take that last one. He was so busy watching TV he didn’t notice that I took the last one. I felt guilty about it, but it’s not like it was licorice! I would have given him the last licorice because I know how much he loves it.

What if I used all my stored-up Karma by eating that extra Poo and this is a Karma-y test? That would be just like Karma! Use Easter Bunny Poo against me. That’s the problem with these ephemeral concepts – you never know what is going to come back and bite you in the ass.

“Do you need a hand, Babe?” Said The Viking. Apparently my ruminations were taking more time than I thought.

“No. I was just thinking.”

He knows better than to wade into that trap. In the end, I took the extra tip off my piece and put it back on his piece and served it before I could change my mind. So my Demon is such a wuss it couldn’t even win me an extra bite of Cheesecake! And that’s fucking depressing.

But who knows? Maybe this one little thing will let me win the Lottery?

Thanks as always to Part-Time Monster and Nerd in the Brain for hosting Weekend Coffee Share. You guys rock.

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Oh! Hello! Is it the weekend already? Let me put some coffee on. I honestly don’t know where the time goes. Do you remember how slowly time passed when you were a kid? It took 29 years for Christmas to arrive. Now, it comes every 3 months. The only place time ceases to move is in the Doctor’s Office, in a Traffic Jam or at the Passport Office.

Anyway, I’ve got bigger fish to fry today. It’s called Litter and it’s the bane of my existence. Who invented this crap? Oh sure, it clumps around cat pee and poo so it’s easy to scoop, but it spreads through the house like a disease. We’ve put men in space but can’t invent a decent litter? My vacuum never sees the inside of the closet anymore.

I made matters infinitely worse when I went to buy more litter and there on the shelf was something called Litter Lite and it practically floated into my cart. I’m accustomed to wrestling a 50 pound bag in which cursing, sweating and grunting are inevitably involved. And usually a small crowd gathers at each end of the aisle to watch the show. Litter Lite was a dream to get in the cart by comparison. I waved at the bystanders and said “No show today, folks!”

However, here are the problems with Litter Lite: it’s easier to dig in and it clings to the fur on the bottom of their feet in spite of having 3 large Litter Pads that are supposed to stop Litter spread. I have carpeted the entire laundry room with those pads (which cost a fortune!) and there is still litter all over the house!

Then The Viking made the mistake of putting too much litter in the box so the litter was almost level with the flap door. And it turns out that both cats are like ground hogs digging new burrows when it comes to burying their poo. Litter shoots through that flappy door at the velocity of sandblasters. We had discussions with both Teddy and Izzie, clustered around the litter box for demonstrations of proper digging techniques that limit the amount of collateral litter spillage, but it’s like they couldn’t care less about technique.

And then catastrophe happened.

I went into the laundry room to load the washing machine and there, laying on a Litter Pad was a turd. It’s was sprinkled lightly with litter but it was definitely a turd.

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE!!” I shoved the clothes into the machine. “WHO FLUNG POO?!!” The sound of 8 little feet and two big feet galloped down the hallway. Teddy, Izzie and The Viking clustered around the doorway, all of them with the same wide-eyed, innocent expressions.

“Did you say something, Babe?”

“YES I DID!” I hollered. “Just look at that! Right there! It’s a TURD!”

The Viking immediately tried to deflect. “I didn’t do it!” But both cats were looking at him and nodding like they saw him do it. “You can’t believe them! They’re traitors! Besides, I can’t even fit in the Litter Box.”

“Touché, salesman!” I huffed and turned my attention to the short people.

Realizing the tide had turned, both cats looked at me. “Well?! Who flung the poo?!”

Izzie’s eyes were locked to mine, but Teddy’s eyes kept flicking to the left. Toward Izzie.

“Did you fling poo, Izzie?” I demanded. “I’ve heard you in there doing the Macarena.”

She sat a little higher and indignation flooded her face. I already knew it wasn’t her but I had to be certain before I looked at the real culprit.

“Teddy?” He wouldn’t look at me. “Did you fling the poo?” He walked away without giving a full confession.

So we made changes. I went to wrestle a 50 pound bag of heavy litter and amuse shoppers, while The Viking scooped the excrement then re-purposed the remaining litter.